


A Handful of Dust

by mrstater



Category: Interstellar (2014)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M, Gen, Inspired by Poetry, Literary References & Allusions, Major Original Character(s), Original Character(s), Pre-Canon, Pre-Movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-17
Updated: 2015-03-22
Packaged: 2018-03-18 06:32:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3559661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrstater/pseuds/mrstater
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cooper hates the dirt, but food is not the only thing growing on his farm. [pre-movie]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: This fic partly came about by learning that Christopher Nolan drew a bit of inspiration for this exquisite film from T.S. Eliot's [Four Quartets](http://www.davidgorman.com/4Quartets/). If you haven't read them, you should, because there is a lot of Interstellar in there! Or rather, there's a lot of Eliot in Interstellar. ;) The poem plays an important role in this fic (as Dylan Thomas' Do Not Go Gentle does in the film), although the title is taken from a line in Eliot's The Wasteland.
> 
> Although for some reason I can't bring myself to call Coop "Joseph" as the Wiki names him, I have gone with the novelization's Erin for his wife. For those who care, my fancast for her is Emily Blunt.
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoy this fic. The second installment is already written, and I'll post it in a few days, so you don't have to worry about being left hanging like with my post-movie fic, Had We But World Enough, And Time (although I do really hope to continue it, or follow it, one of these days). Many thanks to vladnyrki, my awesome beta-reader, who's as an intrepid a fellow fangirl through many fandoms, as Cooper and the crew are exploring all those planets. ;)

A day's worth of dust streaks down Coop's body, forming a muddy puddle on the wet floor of the shower beneath his feet. He glowers at it till the last speck disappears down the drain, no trace left even in tile grout or the edges of his toenails, continues to stand under the hard hot spray till the water begins to cool, prolonging this, his favorite time of day. Well-almost. What usually follows is better, but first he relishes this feeling of being washed clean, for as brief a time as it'll last.

It's not that he minds getting dirty, or even doing the hard work that leads to it; it's what the dirt and hard work represent. Not just that he's a grounded pilot, dreams of space burnt to ash like his shuttle and mingling on the wind with the dust of blighted crops-though that's definitely part of it-but that earth's all that matters anymore. That even dreams of getting out of it come too dear when the very survival of the species depends more than ever on what they can get from it.

Steam swirls out of the bathroom as he opens the door, emerges with a towel around his waist. A few droplets cling to his shoulders and chest, dropping from the curling ends of his hair-badly in need of a trim, the mirror above the dresser reveals. His days in the Air Force are ancient history by now, but Coop still prefers the clean-cut, regulation look. So does Erin-that is, when she's not too absorbed in reading to notice.

He feels a pull at the corner of his mouth as he gazes at his wife from across the room. She's already in bed, book propped on the mound of her belly. The new life growing within her, which they created together, is as mysterious as the stars he once dreamed of exploring, even the second time around. His kids, four year-old Tom, and in a few months this new baby, preserve the sense of wonder in him that farming otherwise kills, as surely as the blight kills their crops.

Bare soles of his feet scuffing on the floorboards, Coops saunters around to his side of the bed. Still Erin doesn't look up from the page, though he's reasonably certain that's intentional now, so he lets the towel fall to the floor, then climbs in beside her, draws the sheet up to his waist as he rolls onto his side facing her.

The lamplight brings out the dark honey tints in her braid, its sheen reminding him of polished cherry wood-back before keeping furniture dusted became a futile endeavor. He lifts the corner of the book to peek at the cover and see what she's reading tonight. The daughter of an English lit teacher-once upon a time, such subjects had been regarded an important part of a well-rounded education-Erin devours her mama's books like the rest of the world devours corn. Coop's got nothing against literature himself, but nevertheless must pass comment on her choice of reading material.

"T.S. Eliot, _Selected Poems_. Do you think it's really in good taste to read _The Wasteland_ when your husband spends all day getting food by the sweat of his brow?"

Blue eyes not wavering from the printed lines of poetry, Erin replies, " _The Wasteland_ 's the only Eliot poem you know, isn't it?"

"Not true-I know that one about the guy who can't make up his damn mind about eating peaches or parting his hair or talking to women."

As he speaks, his hand leaves book for belly, searching the taut, stretchmarked flesh for bumps of knees, elbows, hands, feet pressing from within. He doesn't have to look at his wife to know his movements have drawn her gaze.

"Mom's turning in her grave," she says, and Coop has to restrain a shudder at the casual mention of the family graveyard out back, at the edge of the wheat field. One of many parts of this agrarian existence he'll never accustom himself to. _From dust you came, and to dust you shall return_. If there's a hell, that's it.

"But if it makes you feel any better," Erin goes on, "I'm reading _Four Quartets_."

"What's that one about?" Not giving her a chance to answer, Coop says, "Better yet, how about you read it? Educate us."

" _Us_? Meaning you and the baby?"

"You and me, we got our work cut out for us, compensating for the deficiencies in the public school system."

"Can't argue with that.

"Quite a concession, coming from you." The woman can-and does-argue about just about anything. It's one of the main reasons he married her. That, and his thing for brunettes.

"Just for that, _you_ get to read."

She thrusts the book at him, pushes awkwardly onto her side, the shift in weight on the old mattress making him slide into her. Not that Coop minds, tangling his legs together with hers.

"Naked poetry reading." He rubs his toes along her smooth calf. "You know what that can lead to."

"The baby hasn't moved much today. Your voice always gets him going."

For months now, almost from the beginning, they've referred to the baby as male. Maybe because they had a boy the first time around, and that's what they're used to. Of course without ultrasound machines they don't know this for certain.

It's the uncertainty that brings Coop's teasing mood to an end, now. Not about the baby's sex, but about the myriad other things an ultrasound might've told them, either to reassure expectant parents, or to prepare them for complications or challenges of childbirth and childrearing that might crop up, even in a world not afflicted by famine. Erin keeps pretty calm about it, generally, as she does about everything. _Our species evolved and survived for thousands of years without ultrasounds,_ she likes to say, _and we're not first-time parents_. But occasionally she's the one who needs a dose of the reassurance she so readily doles out.

So Coop rolls onto his back, book in one hand and baby bump beneath the other, and obliges.

_Time present and time past_

_Are both perhaps present in time future,_

_And time future contained in time past._

_If all time is eternally present_

_All time is unredeemable._

He stops, silently re-reads the lines of the poem, letting the meaning sink in.

"Well shit," he says, at length. "Do you really think this is suitable for a baby?"

"More suitable than your language."

Erin places her hand over his, fits slender fingers into the valleys between his knuckles; beneath his palm, her skin bulges with a punch or kick. "Go on."

He does, not stopping again until he reaches the end, the baby's movements coming strong and steady in response to the drawl of his voice.

_Love is itself unmoving,_

_Only the cause and end of movement,_

_Timeless…_

_There rises the hidden laughter_

_Of children in the foliage_

_Quick now, here, now, always-_

_Ridiculous the waste sad time_

_Stretching before and after._

For a moment they lay quietly, then Erin pushes up on her elbow, takes the book from him and closes it.

"Isn't that lovely?" she murmurs, palm resting on the cover, as if she were taking an oath on a holy book.

Coop turns his head on the pillow as she twists to place the Eliot volume on the nightstand. "The dulcet sounds of my voice, maybe," he jokes, and she rolls her eyes-though not before he catches her slight grin that indicates she does, indeed, enjoy listening to him. "Otherwise," he adds, more seriously, "I think you and me must have different definitions of that word. I'd call it downright depressing."

"The two aren't mutually exclusive," she says with a roll of her eyes, then returns to him, again placing her hand over his where it rests on his own stomach above the sheet. "Anyway, you're the one who asked what it was about."

"I'm sorry I did."

"Are you?" Erin's fingers skim beneath the sheet, below his hand, stroking as they follow the thickening trail of hair down from his navel. "'Cause you know what naked poetry reading can lead to…"

* * *

Tom's t-shirt might've been white this morning; it's hard to say as the four year-old skips through the yard, canvas sneakers kicking a cloud of dust up around him. Like the character in those old Charlie Brown comics. Pigpen? Bounding up the porch steps, he's yammering before he even throws the screen door open with the full force of his preschool might. "Mama, Mama, Mama!"

"Inside voice, buddy." Coop shambles behind, hands deep in the pockets of his jeans. But this goes unheard as Tom bee lines upstairs for the study, along with the low chuckle that would've undermined the admonishment anyway.

His amusement continues as he reaches the top of the stairs and leans against the doorframe to watch Tom present Erin with a bunch of dandelions and buttercups.

"I picked these for you, Mama! All by myself!"

Well-Tom doesn't _present_ the flowers so much as shove them in Erin's face as she turns in her old rocking chair at his entrance, commanding in his little voice, pitched higher than usual in excitement, "Smell them! They're pretty, right?"

"Real pretty, Tommy."

Her husky voice and the book open upside-down on her baby bulge indicate her afternoon break to put up her swollen feet turned into a nap. Coop's glad, because she hasn't been sleeping much, unable to get comfortable this late in the pregnancy, and on the rare occasions she can, she's disturbed by vivid dreams.

Pushing off the doorframe, he strides to her, bends to kiss her and murmur, "Not as pretty as you."

There's a glimmer in her eyes as they cut upward before returning full attention to their son. "All by yourself, huh? I can see that."

What Erin sees, in fact, is clumps of soil, which were clinging tenaciously to the roots Tom pulled the flowers up by, dropping onto her belly. Just in time, she moves her book to the side table, out of harm's way, brushes her hand over the cover.

"You didn't forget to take your dirty shoes off on the porch all by yourself, though, did you?"

It's then that Coop looks down at their feet, his and Tom's, notices the clods of dirt caked around the edges, on the toes and soles. Two pairs of footprints, one large in the shape of his work boots, the other about half that size, in the diamond pattern of a kid's sneaker treads, trail across the wooden floor of the study, which Erin's been working to turn into a nursery for the new baby, back through the hall and, presumably all the way down the stairs to the front door.

"Aw, hell." He earns himself another look of disapproval for swearing in front of Tom, who's still jabbering to Erin, to him, to nobody in particular. "Sorry, babe. Don't worry, I got this mess. And that one," he adds, unable to keep from grinning at their grubby little boy. "You just keep on taking it easy."

"I will," she says with a grateful smile that widens as Coop brushes his lips to her forehead, stoops to rub her belly and say to the little one inside, " _Please_ let your Mama get some rest these last couple days you're in there, all right?"

He scoops Tom up his arms, slings the squealing boy over his shoulder like the proverbial sack of potatoes. Not that there've been any potato crops since Tom started eating solids.

It takes a while to deal with Tom-who does _not_ want a bath, but _does_ want a snack and to go back outside, 'cause Grandpa promised to give him a ride in the combine. So Coop sends him off with a peanut butter sandwich to split with Donald, and a reminder to wipe his feet before he comes back inside, or _he'll_ have to sweep. An idle threat for someone too short to handle a broom, he muses as he sits on the porch, scraping the dirt off his own boots so he won't track in more dirt to clean up.

Eventually he makes his way back upstairs to the study with Tom's wildflowers in a mason jar and another peanut butter for Erin, as well as an inquiry: "Hon, you seen the broom? It ain't in the pantry."

The question is answered by the sandpaper rasp of straw against wood even before he rounds the corner to see Erin out of her rocking chair, sweeping.

"Said I'd do that."

"It's fine," Erin replies, back turned to him as she continues to sweep.

Coop sets the plate and makeshift vase on the desk beside the door.

"Look," he says, crossing the room to his wife, "I know you've got this nesting instinct right now, but-"

Her head snaps up as his hand curls around the broom handle. "Yeah. I do."

He drops the broom like a hot potato. It's not Erin's sudden mood shift that surprises him, or even the uncharacteristic hostility, but the streaks of moisture that glimmer on her cheeks.

"You're crying."

She sniffs, gives a short laugh. "You gonna point out that I'm hormonal, too?"

He takes a moment, chooses his words carefully. "It's not like you to get this upset about a little dirt."

Erin's lips press together, and she shakes her head. "This is more than a little dirt."

Free hand resting on her belly, she lumbers, dragging the broom, to the bookshelves that line an entire wall of the study. Gently, she props the broom against them, takes a book down from the shelf. Facing him again, she flips through the pages. In the shaft of afternoon sunlight slanting through the blinds, dust motes swirl in the air, dance like snowflakes.

"I've spent the past three days taking every goddamn book off these shelves and dusting them."

"You shouldn't've done that," says Coop, stepping toward her. "It's too much for you right now."

Erin hates to be mollycoddled just because she's pregnant, he knows that, and he doesn't-much. Everyone's got to pull their own weight these days, and she's a farm girl, born and bred, capable and strong. She'd be out driving tractors with Tom and Donald herself if she weren't nine months pregnant-and be sexy as hell doing it. Sometimes, though, he can't overcome his own protectiveness.

"What about the nesting urge?" she retorts. "It's maternal instinct for a woman to create a place for her baby that's clean and safe. An evolutionary imperative."

"I can help-"

He stops, mid-sentence, as Erin screws her eyes shut, tight. The tears slip out anyway, despite her efforts to contain them. This isn't about her needing his help with a few household chores. It's not about that at all. He needs to let her say her piece.

"The world's not safe, Coop," she says, eyes open again, and watery. "It's turned against us. You and Dad work so hard just to put food on the table, but the crops turn to dust and we can't keep it out of the house anymore."

As she speaks, his gaze drifts over her head, out the hazy window to the fields beyond.

"Look at Tom," he says, his own voice hoarse with rising emotion. "He's happy and healthy."

Erin turns to watch their little boy climbing up the combine ladder like a playground jungle gym, her father on the ground, not hovering, but near enough to catch him should the little sneaker-shod feet miss a rung or small tender fingers lose their grip.

"We've been lucky," she says, her arms going around her belly, cradling their unborn child. "What if our luck runs out? How can we take that risk?"

Coop doesn't have any answers to her questions-they're his, too, in fact. So he turns her toward him, holding her close as he can against him as she cries against his chest, and does his best to soothe her with sympathetic silence and slow circles on her back.

After a few minutes, when her sobs have subsided a bit, she lets out a shuddering breath, says, "Sorry. I _am_ hormonal." She darts a glance up at him, looks almost guilty. "And I've been reading Eliot again. _The Wasteland._ Not the best pregnancy reading material. You can say you told me so. "

He doesn't. Instead, Coop removes one arm from around her waist, touches her chin, thumb stroking the cleft as he tilts her face up toward his.

"I've been thinking about that other poem. _Four Quartets?_ "

"Yeah?"

"Trying to figure out why you like it so much."

Erin blinks, as though this isn't at all what she expected him to say, wipes the corners of her eyes. "Or say that the end precedes the beginning."

"Are you reciting?"

_The end and the beginning were always there_

_Before the beginning and after the end._

_And all is always now._

"Guess that answers that," Coop says. "But back to the initial question."

"That's what I like," Erin says. "The idea that time- _all_ of time-plays out simultaneously. Beginnings and endings are just constructs of our temporal minds."

"Doesn't that make our lives inevitable? Unchangeable? You know I don't care much for the idea of fate."

On the other hand, it seems to Coop that all his attempts to change his fate have failed. He worked as hard as he's ever labored in the fields to become an astronaut, but he's still stuck here in the dirt with everyone else.

"Maybe," Erin's voice draws him back from the clouds; he tightens his arm around her waist, grounding himself. "Maybe it also means we don't have to fear it."

"What _will_ happen, _has_ happened?" Coop turns the thought over in his mind. "Sorta like Murphy's Law, ain't it?"

She cocks her head, brows knitting, as though she hasn't considered it that way before. "A little bit, yeah. _Oof_!"

The baby kicked. Coop felt it against him, but moves his hand from Erin's face to her belly to feel the sudden burst of fetal activity.

Maybe they did take a risk they shouldn't, having a second kid. Maybe their luck will run out. One thing's certain, he thinks, grinning as a lump down low bumps his hand-a head-butt?- and that's that there's no going back now. Even if past, present, and future are all playing out simultaneously.

"Babe?" he says. "What're your thoughts about Murphy?"

"Murphy's law?"

"Naw, just Murphy."

"As a name?" Erin looks down at his hands, then back up at him. "For the baby?"

"Murphy Cooper," he draws out the name, testing it. "Got kind of a nice ring to it."

"I like it," Erin agrees with a smile, but then her brows draw together. "What if it's a girl?"

Coop's still got that feeling it's another boy, but if it'll take even a small load off his wife's mind to make sure all their bases are covered with regard to baby names and gender, he's happy to indulge. "There any law that says Murphy can only a boy's name?"

"It's all settled, then," she says, and leans up to kiss him. When they draw apart, she grabs the broom from where she propped it against the bookshelf, hands it to Coop.

"I should start supper."

She goes off, munching on the sandwich even though they'll be eating a proper meal soon-as proper a meal as they can get, these days. Coop doesn't start sweeping at once, but stands in the middle of the room, watching the specks float in the bars of light that fall across the old crib she set up in the corner.

She has shown him fear in a handful of dust.

* * *

The family gathers at the bottom of the porch, watching the flames in the far burning field. Well-the others may watch the fire; Coop's eyes are on the smoke. His gaze follows the upward waft of billowing black-up, always up, to the sky and not this failing earth-flecks of white, ash and dust, winking against the backdrop like the stars at night. With the fire below, he can almost imagine the blast of rocket engines, lifting off, the weightlessness not only of escaping gravity, but of the burden of longing lifting off him at long last as he pilots among the stars.

His father-in-law's voice brings him back to earth.

"The last of our wheat."

The words are sad, but they're spoken more with resignation than anything else. They've known this day would come, expected it much sooner, in fact, as one by one their neighbors torched their fields in a valiant but ultimately vain effort to stop the spread of blight.

"We won't ever grow any more."

"But Grandpa," Tom says, "if we don't have wheat, how'll we make bread?"

He's eight now, gangly arms and legs attached to a seemingly bottomless stomach. Not as tall as his father yet, of course, and Coop glances over his head at his wife, who's holding their three year-old daughter. Erin's as pretty as ever, but her face is drawn, with too many lines for her age; thirty's still a couple years off for both of them. He sees the roll of her throat as she swallows the fear that's come to pass. If he were standing beside her he'd take her hand, squeeze it to let her know he shares her pain. It hurts that their kids, who ought to be playing hide and seek in those fields, instead watch them burn to ash and worry about food running out.

Or could be she's not thinking that at all. Is it physical pain? She's been having these headaches lately, though she never was prone to them before. Seen a couple docs: one suggested she get her eyes checked, the other said it's probably tension, or maybe hormonal migraines. The stress of impending food shortage, the failure of her father's farm, might've triggered another one just now.

"Lucky for us," Coops says, in as upbeat a tone as he can muster, for Erin's sake as much as the kids', "your mama's got the best cornbread recipe in the state."

He tousles Tom's dark hair, and his son grins, though the eyes he cuts upward are deep blue with concern beneath furrowed black brows. "Can we make peanut butter sandwiches with it?"

There's a few jars left in the basement fridge, but the peanut went extinct a year back. But Coop's not about to tell a kid the peanut butter'll be gone soon.

"We can sure try," he answers.

"Peanut butter on cornbread." Erin makes a face. "That sounds super gross."

"Vile," Donald agrees, with a snort of laughter.

"Ew, yucky!" chirps Murph, scrunching up her nose-Erin's nose-in a mirror of her mother's expression.

It brings some much-needed levity, and Coop grins at the small redhead-who couldn't have done anything more to live up to the notion that anything can happen, will happen, than by being born a girl, when her parents had somehow convinced themselves she'd be a boy. Murphy's law never had a more joyous outcome. Though Tom took some convincing that a little sister would be all right.

"Wind's picking up," Donald observes. "You two should get the kids inside before the dust and ash blow this way."

"Dad's right," says Erin. "Come on, Tommy."

" _Mo-om_!" Tom whines. "Don't call me Tommy!"

Ignoring him, Erin adjusts Murph on her hip, turns toward the house, not casting so much as a last glance back at the burning wheat field. As she lifts her foot to mount the porch steps, she stumbles, lurches forward.

The next split-second is a ruckus: Tom's shout of _Mom!_ Coop's and Donald's unison _Erin!_ as they leap toward her, Murph's cry and the thud of Erin's hip on the step as she twists to keep from crashing down on top of the toddler. Thankfully Coop's reflexes are good, and he manages to catch Murph before she hits the ground.

"Are you alright?" he asks, kneeling with his crying daughter on his shoulder while Donald gingerly eases Erin into a seated position on the step.

"Did you trip?" asks her father.

"Got dizzy all the sudden."

"Fuck," Coop mutters. Along with the headaches, Erin's had a few bouts of vertigo. Never resulted in a fall before, though.

"It's passing now. I'm fine," she says speaks through her teeth, as though biting back pain.

Coop asks, "Another headache?"

"Little bit."

She doesn't meet his eyes, and she winces. Her head hurts more than a _little bit_. Considerably. Coop's fingers curl into a fist he wants to put through something-or someone.

Instead, he says, "Alright, this's gone on long enough," hands a still whimpering Murph off to her grandpa so he can scoop a protesting Erin into his arms. "Go get me my wallet and keys, Tom. We're going to the hospital." Not that the clinic they have in town really qualifies as such, or that the doctors there have proved very helpful with this.

Tom stands frozen on the porch. "What's wrong with Mom?"

"Mommy?" Murph squirms in Donald's arms, arms reaching out as Coop turns away with her mother.

"Cooper." Erin's fingers grasp feebly at his jacket, her head lolling against his shoulder. "The kids. You're scaring them."

"Yeah?" He drops his volume, but he's too worked up, so his whisper comes out more of a hiss. "Well it scares _me_ that these headaches are getting so bad they knock you down."

Erin raises her head, looks him in the eye. For the first time since all this began, Coop can see she's scared of this, too. He tightens his arms around her.

"I'm too dizzy to drive right now," she says. "I'll throw up all over the truck. Please…just take me up to bed."

Coop grits his teeth and breathes in, long, through his nose, slowly exhales. He cannot win an argument with this woman, even when she's lying like a ragdoll in his arms.

He gives her the migraine meds one doctor readily wrote her a scrip for without really listening to her medical history, and she nearly vomits them back up. Once she's settled in bed, he sits with her till she sleeps, which she does almost as soon as her head touches the pillow. For a minute he watches her breathe, as if she's a child, like he used to watch Tom and Murph when they were babies, still does, on occasion. Then he leaves her to look after them, distracts them by letting them help him whip up a batch of peanut butter cookies because-why the hell not, if they're not gonna have any more bread to eat it on anyway?

"These're your mama's favorite," he tells the kids as they munch on cookies warm and soft from the oven. "They'll make her feel better."

"Is she gonna be okay?" Tom asks.

Coop hesitates a moment before reaching over to stroke his son's hair, his other hand squeezing Murph as she perches on his lap, getting more cookie in his lap than in her mouth. "She needs a good night's sleep."

Not an outright lie, though he feels about as guilty as he would if he told one. He hates not being totally honest with the kids, but some things you just can't tell them. Like that soon there won't be any peanut butter, and something serious might be wrong with their mother.

Later, he goes up to check on her. Stealth's near impossible in this old farmhouse, with its creaky floorboards and rattling doorknobs, but that turns out not to be necessary. As soon as he sets foot inside, Erin's voice sounds hoarsely in the darkness.

"How're the kids?"

"Did I wake you?"

A rustling sound indicates her head moving on the pillow. "I woke up a while ago. Did you put Tom and Murph to bed?"

Coop easily navigates to the bed in the dark, sets a plate of cookies on the nightstand beside the ever-present book, and flicks on the lamp. He's met with the sight of Erin turning her face away, screwing her eyes shut tight, putting up a hand to block out the light. Right now he doesn't want to talk about the kids, but he knows she won't talk about what he wants to till he does. So he seats himself at the edge of the mattress, springs groaning, takes the hand that rests on the bedspread and threads their fingers together.

"Tom's pissed off I wouldn't let him stay up to watch them put out the fire. Murph kept asking for one more story."

And he couldn't say no. He doesn't have to say it for Erin to know. It's clear from her smile, which eases some of the pain from her features, loosening some of the tightness in Coop's chest, too.

"She'll be the one staying up all hours, reading under her covers with a flashlight when she's older," Erin says.

"Think we got enough books for her?"

They laugh together, low.

Erin opens her eyes. "They're such beautiful kids."

She says it exactly like she said each one was beautiful when she held them for the first time, gazed down into their tiny wrinkled faces peering out from the blankets she knit. As if she's reliving the moment now.

"We make 'em pretty good, don't we?"

For the first time, Coop wonders if she'd ever consider having more. Her dad hints at it every now and then, mostly in terms of it being the duty of the young to repopulate the earth. Now's probably not the most ideal time to ask. Not with the wheat gone, and Erin not well.

"Hey." Her grip tightens on his hand, and he looks up to see her expression's turned playful. "No, _It's cause they got a beautiful mama?_ " She mimics his drawl. "What's a gal got to do to get a little Southern charm around here? Doesn't a migraine at least warrant pity compliments?"

Much as Coop wants to keep up the banter, the direct reference to her current health status returns him to a serious frame of mind.

"Will my Southern charm convince you to let me take you to a doctor?"

"I've seen doctors."

"Erin." He shifts to lie down, stretching his body along the length of hers. Still holding her hand, he draws it up to rub it against his stubble, presses his lips to her knuckles. "We've got to find someone who can figure out what's causing this and fix it."

What if it _can't_ be fixed? Like the blight.

"It could just be a migraine." She doesn't sound convinced.

"Could be," he acquiesces. The hand not holding hers goes up to trace the line of hair back from her brow, lets the fine strands slide around his fingers. "Could be something else. Don't hurt to cover our bases, does it?"

"Tomorrow. Right now, hand me my book?"

Coop twists, reaching back to grab the slim volume of T.S. Eliot poems which has appeared on her nightstand with increasing regularity over the past three years. He shoves the thought away that her headaches follow a similar progression.

"Bet you've got this memorized by now."

"Parts of it. A few lines kept going through my head while we watched the fire."

As she flips through the pages, Coop puts another pillow behind her so she can sit up, settles his head on her shoulder when she finds the passage and starts to read:

_In my beginning is my end._

She pauses. Coop's glad, hopes she'll stop entirely, because one line in and _end_ seems so ominous. Turns out she only stopped because her eyes are having a little trouble focusing, and she asks him to hand her the reading glasses the optometrist prescribed when the headaches first began. Watching her settle them on the bridge of her nose, Coop regrets how he teased her when she got them about getting old.

_Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,_

_Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place_

_Is an open field…_

Again she stops reading. Pulls off her glasses, sinks back into the pillows.

"Not helping?" Coop asks, sitting up.

Erin shakes her head slightly on the pillow, eyes closed. "Seeing double." She taps him with the book, a clear indication for him to go on.

"I got my clothes on still," he says. "Be happy to change that, if you'd prefer it be one of my famous naked poetry readings."

"Nudity and double vision…Tempting, but…think I'll keep my eyes closed."

_On a summer midnight, you can hear the music..._

_And see them dancing around the bonfire…_

_Round and round the fire_

_Leaping through the flames, or joined in circles,_

_Rustically solemn or in rustic laughter_

_Lifting heavy feet in clumsy shoes,_

_Earth feet, loam feet, lifted in country mirth_

_Mirth of those long since under earth_

_Nourishing the corn._

That loathsome thought again, of being buried in the dirt.

"We're not gonna be nourishing our corn any time soon," Coop says. "Vice versa. I'll see to that."

"I know you'd rather be up there. I saw you today, looking up at the sky." She opens her eyes, blearily, touches his face. He hears the soft rasp of his growth of beard against the pads of her fingers. "I'm sorry you can't be."

She gets him so completely that he nearly feels ashamed.

"Well I'm not," he insists. He takes her by the shoulder, rolls her toward him so they lie forehead-to-forehead; if she weren't seeing double before, she surely would now. "Nowhere I'd rather be than right here, right now, with you."

He presses his lips to hers, firmly, as if to back up his words. He is surprised when Erin parts his lips with her tongue, imparting reassurance to him.

Lying in each other's embrace, Coop feels himself start to drift off, along with the warmth of her breath on his neck as she murmurs:

_Love is most nearly itself_

_When here and now cease to matter._

_Old men ought to be explorers…_

"You callin' me old?"

_Here or there does not matter_

_We must be still and still moving..._

_In my end is my beginning._


	2. Chapter 2

Dirt drops onto the pine coffin, softly, but Coop's ears ring with it. Hours later, after the grave is filled, it continues playing on a loop in his mind. Shovelful after shovelful, each one closing a little more of the distance between them, making their separation permanent.

He never believed it was possible to hate the dirt any more than he already did, but now it chokes him. He can't swallow a bite of the potluck meal friends and neighbors brought to the funeral along with their condolences. Just pushes at the hodgepodge of casseroles and canned vegetables around on his plate, like she was always after the kids not to.

It's what Erin would've wanted, he tries to convince himself. Not dying suddenly, too young, but being buried out back, next to her mother, at the edge of the burnt-out wheat field where Donald bravely says, "Next year we'll plant corn, and it'll be a good crop."

Coop's issues with the land were never her own, though she understood him; knew that though this is, and was, and always will be her home, it's not where his heart is.

"Dad?"

Tom's voice fills his ears, muffles the echo in his head of the dirt. Coop looks at him, dark hair combed, still dressed in the only good clothes he owns, eyes rimmed in red, the plate of food in front of him untouched, too.

Murph's not eating, either, but that's not all that unusual for her, being three and in one of those picky phases. Nevertheless, it won't do. They've got to eat.

They've especially got to know their one remaining parent's here with them.

"Yeah, son?" he says, and spears a few pieces of fried okra with his fork.

Tom does the same, takes it a step further, asks with his mouth full: "Why'd the preacher say _ashes to ashes, dust to dust_? What's that mean?"

Lines read to her from that goddamn poem whisper through Coop's mind:

_Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth_

_Which is already flesh, fur and faeces,_

_Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and leaf._

He chews, turns to Murph with another bite ready on his fork. "Missy Roberts fried up some yummy okra."

She slumps onto her elbows, the left one landing smack in the middle of the creamed corn on her plate. "I don't want okra. I want Mommy."

For a moment Coop's too overwhelmed to say or do anything. How can a little girl, even a whip smart one like Murph, be made to understand her mama's gone forever?

How can _he_?

"I know, Murph," Donald says in a weary voice, looking visibly older than he did a few days ago, when Erin was still with them and the doctors gave them no reason to believe she imminently wouldn't be. "We all do. And your mommy would want you to eat your okra."

He reaches toward his granddaughter with a napkin, but before he Murph resists. As her pout escalates into a full-blown fit, Coop comes out of his stupor.

"Hey, Murph," he says, calmly. He may not have a clue how to help kids grieve, but he knows a thing or two about how to diffuse a temper tantrum. "Lick that cream corn off your elbow."

Donald regards him dubiously from across the table, but thankfully doesn't pass comment on Coop's laid-back approach to behavior modification and leaves him to handle his own daughter. Sure enough, the fit that brewed like a summer thunderstorm vanishes just as quickly as Murph blinks at the silly command.

"You can't lick your own elbow," Tom says. "No one can, it's impossible."

"Nuh-uh!" Murph shoots back at him, puffing out her chest. "I can too lick my elbow! Watch this!"

The three males watch her contortions as she tries to do the impossible. When she starts to giggle at the unexpected difficulty, Tom darts Coop a glance that seems to ask whether it's really alright to laugh when they just buried his mother. Only when Donald starts to chuckle, and Coop follows, does the boy join in.

… _in rustic laughter_

_Lifting heavy feet…_

_Earth feet, loam feet, lifted in country mirth_

_Mirth of those long since under earth…_

Like he did when Murph was in a high chair refusing baby food, and he resorted to playing airplane to ensure she got some nutrition in her, Coop takes advantage of her open mouth to feed her a bite of okra, then wipes the cream corn off her elbow with his own napkin. Over her little red head, bobbing as she eats with enthusiasm now, Donald gives him a nod.

Coop takes a long drink of water and, feeling a little more confident of his parenting abilities, turns back to Tom. "You know about Adam and Eve?"

"The first people."

"According to the Abrahamic creation myths," Coop clarifies, "God formed Adam from the dust, then Eve from one of Adam's ribs. When they sinned, God banished them from the Garden of Eden and cursed them with a life of hard labor farming the land-" _That_ part, Coop has no difficulty believing. "-and eventually, death. Up till then, see, they'd had eternal life. _From dust you came, and to dust you shall return_."

Tom's fork clatters to his plate. "Mom died because…she did something bad?"

The story's so familiar to Coop, and he got so caught up in the telling of it that he never stopped to think how Tom might process it in this context.

If Donald approved of the way he handled Murph, the look he shoots him now is anything but, though he says, "That's not what your father meant, Tom."

The legs of Coop's chair scrape on the floorboards as he pushes back from the table, stands, lays a hand on Tom's shoulder. His wedding band catches the low sunlight coming in through the window, makes his eyes sting.

"Now you listen to me," he tells Tom, quietly, bending to meet his son's eyes. "Your mama was never nothing but good. Everybody dies. It's got nothing to do with whether we deserve it or not. Mom didn't. It just…happened. You understand?"

It didn't _have_ to happen. The thought makes his heart pound, breaths come shallower. If they'd had the right tools, they could've found out about that cyst months ago. Never mind that the doctors he confronted after the autopsy tried to absolve themselves by claiming it was inoperable. That even if they'd known about it, there still wouldn't have been a damned thing they could do to save her. Only thing different would be they'd have known she was dying, rather than being blindsided the morning she went to bed with a headache and never woke up.

"I said I understand, Dad," comes Tom's pinched voice.

Realizing his grip tightened on Tom's shoulder, Coop relaxes his fingers, pulls his son against him.

"She loved you more than anything," he says, not hiding the break of his voice, or stopping the slide of tears down his face. "You and Murph."

Tom cries against him, quietly. Manly at eight, his sobs are felt rather than heard, tremors in his bony shoulders, but Coop strokes his hair as he did when Tom was a baby. At the table, Murph goes on eating her okra, polishing off hers, then leaning over to steal from Coop's plate. He's got no appetite left for it anyway, after this near-disastrous talk with Tom; he's thankful Murph's too little to ask questions like these.

For now.

The questions do come, as Murph gets older, her bright young mind grappling to grieve for a mother she can barely remember. Unlike her big brother, who's mainly interested in the literal, the here and now, from an early age Murph's curiosity and imagination tend toward the mysterious, even the supernatural. It's a comfort to Cooper as he mourns his wife to discover one of their kids' minds works a lot like his-better, he thinks, though he keeps that to himself because it just feels like a dumb parenting move to tell your kid you suspect she's a hell of a lot smarter than you-but that also comes with its challenges. Like the stubbornness she inherited from him, although Coop prefers to call it tenacity.

One of the ideas she digs her heels into is ghosts-he's got Donald to thank for that. Although Coop can't quite manage to disabuse her of the notion of their existence, he doesn't think her insistence that they do has much to do with Erin. It shouldn't come as a surprise to him when they're driving back to the farm from town one day when she's around the age Tom was when their mother died, and Murph asks from the rear of the cab:

"Is heaven real?"

Flexing his fingers on the steering wheel, Coop glances sideways at Donald in the passenger seat, as if to ask, _This come from you?_ His father-in-law's not exactly a religious man, but he is something of a spiritual one. Generally he keeps such thoughts to himself, with the exception of ghosts. Now, Donald only looks back at Coop with a look of innocence-and interest as to whether he'll strike out with this latest curve ball thrown by his precocious little girl.

"Heaven?" Coop repeats, glancing at her in the rearview mirror, full aware he sounds like he's stalling.

"Where people go after they die."

"I know what heaven is, Murph."

A grin tugs at the corner of Coop's mouth. Even if you make a conscious decision not to tell your kids they're smarter than you, they still manage to acquire the idea that their parents are dumbasses. He thought he had a _little_ longer before Murph felt this way about him.

"Least, I know what people _say_ it is. Who's saying?"

She hesitates, as if he's asked her to rat on a friend. She looks down. "Bobby Nelson. He said Mom's there." Her eyes meet his again in the mirror, narrowing slightly. "Is she?"

_I am here_

_Or there, or elsewhere._

"Well," Coop rubs at the batch of stubble beneath his bottom lip. "I suppose that partly depends on what you mean by _heaven_. If you're talking about a place where all the good people go after they die, while all the bad people are sent to…"

He trails off. Although he's always been of the opinion of answering his kids' questions honestly, eternal damnation's not a subject he's easy about introducing, recalling how his off-hand reference to Adam and Eve's curse made Tom react all those years ago. He checks the mirror again, sees one of his son's earbuds dangle, listening with one ear to the conversation now instead of his music, expression unreadable.

"Hell," Murph finishes Coop's sentence for him.

"No. I don't hold to the concepts of eternal punishment or reward."

"So you think once we're dead, we're just... _gone_? There's no afterlife?"

"Now I say didn't say that. I said I don't believe in heaven in the way kids like Bobby Nelson mean it."

Or his parents, Coop mentally adds, looking out across the cornfields, in the direction of the Nelson farm. Unlike Donald, Robert and Judy Nelson are absolutely the type of people who talk about their religious beliefs, especially to their impressionable children.

"I'm no physicist or philosopher," Coop goes on, "but even I know enough to know that kind of afterlife's an oversimplification. On the other hand, who am I to say there's not one at all? The universe is far more vast and complex than our minds can even begin to comprehend. These are the kinds of questions the space program tried to find answers to."

"Is that why you wanted to be an astronaut?" Tom joins in the conversation.

Coop feels Donald's eyes on him. He's never sure if it's his imagination or not, but he senses a slight disapproval from Erin's dad whenever he talks about his past as a NASA pilot. As if he's a kid whose head's in the clouds when his feet ought to be planted firmly on the ground.

"Not specifically to find out all the answers to life and the universe," he replies.

"And everything?" Murph cuts in, grinning at him in the mirror; she's been reading Douglas Adams, courtesy of her mama's bookshelves.

Coop grins back, goes on, "I wanted to explore. There's so much we've never seen with our own eyes, even right here in this solar system."

For a few minutes they drive in silence. As Coop turns the truck down the road between the cornfields to their farm, churning up a fresh cloud of dust to coat it, Murph asks:

"So if there is a heaven, it could be somewhere in outer space?"

_O dark dark dark._

_They all go into the dark,_

_The vacant interstellar spaces._

"Or time," Coop says.

In the backseat, Tom grumbles about sci-fi, starts to put his headphones back on.

"Or maybe there isn't life after death," Coop goes on, impulsively, wanting to engage his son a little longer. Tom stops, meets his eye in the mirror. "Maybe we only live on in a figurative sense. Our bodies decaying in the ground, becoming a part of the earth, making the plants grow. Feeding another generation."

"Like fertilizer?" Tom says.

Donald snorts. "Sounds like your dad took a course on philosophy from _The Lion King_."

"What's that?" Tom asks.

"Some old cartoon from when your grandpa was a kid," Coop replies.

"That was a little before my time," Donald grumbles, slightly affronted by the knock on his age.

"T.S. Eliot was, too," says Coop. "Yeah, I've read a poem."

He fixes Donald with a pointed look before glancing back at the kids again.

"There was this poem your mom liked…" He stops, throat suddenly aching, swallows. It's still hard, after five years, to talk about Erin in the past tense. "It has a line in it, _Mirth of those long since under earth, nourishing the corn_."

"I like that, too," says Tom.

They're home now, and Coop parks in front of the farmhouse. As he helps Murph down from the truck, she looks up at him, forehead furrowed with a frown.

"I don't."

"To tell you the truth, Murph," he says, putting an arm around her as they follow Donald and Tom up to the house, "me neither. I hope there _is_ a heaven."

"So you can see Mom again?"

Coop nods, his gaze drifting upwards, over the faded grey shingles to the sky.

And 'cause it's likely the closest he'll ever get to finding a place among the stars.

* * *

There isn't a speck of dust on the porch, nor on the toes of Coop's boots. He glowers down at them as the last swig of beer rolls down his throat, studying the grain of the boards, imagining some of the lines in the old wood were made by the stuff straw bristles of a broom, pushed across the porch a million times by him, Donald, the kids...Erin. Never clean for more than a few minutes before the next gust of wind brought a fresh dusting of dirt.

It's not that he misses the dust, 'cause he sure as hell doesn't; it's what the dust represents. Not just the struggle they had just to put food on the table, which is recorded in the documentary that was playing on the TVs when that NASA admin who seemed too young to grow facial hair, let alone to hold that title, brought him to the farmhouse earlier today. But that they were here at all.

Oh, there are traces of them everywhere. All their old stuff's here-furniture and books, even clothes-artefacts of Dr. Murphy Cooper's family, kept just out of reach by velvet museum ropes swagged between gleaming brass poles. Their faces, the generations that came before and after, whom Coop never knew, smile from the walls and pages of photograph albums. It's more mausoleum than museum. To him, it's like he felt looking at Erin's body before they buried her: a hollowed out shell, the essence of her gone.

_Home is where one starts from. As we grow older_

_the world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated_

_Of dead and living._

Porch still creaks, though, he discovers when he pushes to his feet. He lets out a groan himself, which prompts his companion to say, "Careful, Cooper. People might think you're starting to show signs of your age."

" _People_ might?" Coop retorts as he straightens up, rolls his shoulders. "I am an antique, though. Like this old rocking chair."

He runs his hand over its back as he shambles toward the door, inspects the pads of his fingertips for traces of dust. Of course they come away clean.

"Gonna get me another beer. You want anything?"

"I'll take a whiskey, if you've got one."

Coop turns to see TARS' light blinking, as if he might not otherwise catch the joke himself. Actually Coop hadn't meant to be funny, but made the offer out of habit. He wonders if this is how Dr. Mann slowly lost his marbles, all alone in that ice world with only a robot to keep him company-until he dismembered it, of course. That doesn't stop him from bantering with TARS.

"Me'n Donald," he says, "we distilled a bit of moonshine back in the day."

What else did you do with an overabundance of corn? Is there any still stashed in the pantry? Doubtful. If Donald and Tom didn't finish it off, the museum people probably cleared it out. It's a strange thought, Tom with that heavy dark beard, taking his place out here on the porch with Donald. Though not nearly as much as that he'll soon meet Murph as an old woman.

"Glad to know you're not a lightweight," Coop says.

"That would be CASE."

Chuckling at the accurate assessment of the two robots' personalities and what kind of drinking buddies they'd make, Coop goes inside. The slap of the screen door behind him cuts off his laugh abruptly.

For some time he stands in the front hall, the only sound the ticking of the old grandfather clock in the living room. In his chest his heart seems to slows to keep time with it, though ever since he left, the steady beat of his pulse for them has been out of time. Tom's whole life...One moment in Murph's bedroom.

_Not the intense moment_

_Isolated, with no before and after,_

_But a lifetime burning in every moment…_

Lurching into motion, Coop makes his way straight through the house, not breaking stride when he sets the empty bottle on the kitchen table, nor turning when the sound of shattered glass signifies that he didn't _quite_ set it on the table after all. He pushes through the back door, clatters down the porch steps, finally stopping at the edge of the cornfield. The tall stalks, untouched by blight or drought, cast bent shadows beneath the simulated moonlight.

_Grandpa died last week._ He'll never forget the last words of Tom's last message, heard years too late. _We buried him out in the back plot next to mom, and Jesse. Which is where we would've buried you if you'd ever...come back._

The tears flow, just as they did when he saw Tom's heart break: Grandpa gone, Dad gone, son- _Jesse_ \- gone. The boy's face still present in the man's, so near on the video screen, but years and galaxies between, stopping him from reaching out to stroke the dark hair in the instinctive gesture of comfort. Coop kneels on the ground, grasps hold of clumps of grass, digs his fingers down till he clutches handfuls of dirt. Well-he's come back now.

But they're not here.

"Cooper? I heard glass inside the house."

"Looks like I'm the lightweight, TARS." Coop wipes his eyes, turns to face the robot. "One beer, and I'm breaking shit and bawling like a baby."

It ain't 95% honesty, not even close, but TARS lets it go.

"You have dirt on your face."

Coop touches his cheek. Sure enough, his fingers come away smudged.

"I used to hate the dirt, TARS. More than anything" He presses thumb, middle and forefingers together, rolls the grit between them. "The thought of being dead and buried…" _Nourishing the corn_. "Now I think…least I'd be with 'em. _From dust you came, and to dust you shall return._ Maybe that's part of it. 'Cept this ain't the dust I came from. Where they're buried."

He's never related to a fictional character so much as he does now to Dorothy Gale, opening her front door and realizing she and her farmhouse have been picked up and set down again very far from Kansas and Uncle Henry and Auntie Em.

"But Cooper, humans weren't made from the dust of Earth. Did you forget Sagan in your old age?"

Coop catches his breath, releases it again.

" _We are star stuff._ "

He looks up-up, always up, to the sky and not this imitation Earth-through the curving windows of Cooper Station. Eternal black, glittering with seventy billion trillion stars. And among them, a scant two-year flight away, reflecting starlight, sunlight, moonlight, is Earth.

Coop remembers how it felt to see his home planet for the first time from space, at the start of the journey that brought him here. How his only regret was not that he was seeing it, but that he couldn't share it with his children.

He remembers Erin, too, sharing that poem with him, not long before she died. How's it go? A line about how old men ought to be explorers. He hassled her about the _old_ part, but now it fits.

"A hundred and twenty-four, babe," he murmurs as he starts back to the house-pristine white with its fresh paint job, yet almost dusty-looking beneath the stars-certain that somewhere, some _time_ she hears him.

In Murph's room he goes straight to the bookshelves, searches for T.S. Eliot's _Selected Poems_ , and a message meant for him. It takes a while, due to the lack of organization-his fault, for pushing them off the shelves. Finally he finds it, lying on its side at the bottom of the stack, a pretty clear indication that it's one of the ones he used to spell out his crude Morse Code. Smiling through tears at the thought, he flips through the pages, quickly at first, then more carefully when he feels they're brittle with age.

On first pass he doesn't find what he's looking for, thinks he's in for a night of reading through the _Four Quartets_ from their beginning, when his eye is drawn by the printed words on the final page of the poem:

_With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling_

_We shall not cease from exploration_

_And the end of all our exploring_

_Will be to arrive where we started_

_And know the place for the first time._

 

_Not known, because not looked for_

_But heard, half-heard, in the stillness_

_Between two waves of the sea._

 

_Quick now, here, now, always-_

_A condition of complete simplicity_

_(Costing not less than everything)_

_And all shall be well and_

_All manner of thing shall be well._

 

**~Fin~**


End file.
